


Silence for an Answering Music

by KillClaudio



Category: Space Explorers RPF
Genre: Character Stows Away On An Alien Spacecraft, Gen, POV Animal, Spaceships, Treat, sneaky Kropotkin quotes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-16 06:46:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21031970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KillClaudio/pseuds/KillClaudio
Summary: Before they close the hatch they kiss her nose and coo to her in tender tones. They're strange, this little pack of humans Laika has lived with over the past few months, but she's grown fond of them. She noses at their hands to reassure them, and then the door is sealed and she watches them retreat, until they vanish out of sight.





	Silence for an Answering Music

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gloss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/gifts).

> I loved your prompts and thought Laika deserved a happy ending with some friendly aliens! I know Sputnik 2 only orbited the Earth, but there are no aliens in near-Earth orbit (afaik), so we're going to pretend it overshot.

Before they close the hatch they kiss her nose and coo to her in tender tones. They're strange, this little pack of humans Laika has lived with over the past few months, but she's grown fond of them. She noses at their hands to reassure them, and then the door is sealed and she watches them retreat, until they vanish out of sight.

Laika doesn't know what is happening. But she hasn't known much, since she was taken from her home and made part of this new pack, and they have not asked her for anything she cannot endure. She will endure this too.

There is a strange roaring from beneath her and the ship jolts, and then Laika feels as though she is being thrown upwards, ever upwards, higher and higher and higher. She does not fall. Instead she is suspended, weightless, floating in the center of the small cabin.

Outside the tiny window it is dark, even though it is not yet night. She feels as much fascination as fear, looking out at the dark skies and the little ball of blue and green that is slowly receding as her cabin climbs into the sky. But she is alone for a long, long time. Perhaps days. The cabin is hot, hotter than Laika has ever experienced before, even during the odd exercises the humans did with her. She obediently eats her gel and drinks what little water she has and waits, and waits, and waits.

Then there is a sudden motion, a juddering, and Laika is no longer flying but flung sideways, up and down, against the walls of the cabin, and when it stops she is upside down on the ceiling.

There is fire and smoke and acrid smells, but Laika is not afraid. She was a stray on the streets of Moscow. She has known cold, and hunger, and loss, and she does not panic easily. Instead she pulls herself up and noses around, searching for a stream of clean air. A fresh, cool breeze is coming from the corner and she heads towards it, squeezes herself through the narrow gap, and she is free.

This new place has strange smells. No sooner has she escaped than a crowd of strange beings close on her small ship, waving at it and tentatively touching it. Laika retreats into a dark and hidden corner, while they take away the ship and wander around, as though searching for something. She knows how to be quiet and invisible. She knows how to find food in unlikely places. She will survive.

It takes three days for them to discover her. Then there is chaotic motion, running about on their strange legs, and a scent that Laika thinks might be panic. They corner her in a room on the bottom floor, a dozen aliens surrounding her, and Laika growls and bares her teeth to show that she is not defenseless. But she feels a sharp stab in her side, even though none of them are near her, and once again she is falling.

She wakes in another cage. A room full of aliens are staring at her, waving their eyes curiously. She stares back with almost equal curiosity. There is much poking and prodding, and she resigns herself to another small space. But it is no more than a little while until they open the cage, and she is allowed out to explore.

These new beings do not make noises. They communicate with body language, with scent, closer to the way dogs understand each other. At first the silence is strange, and Laika misses the soothing sounds of the humans burbling to each other, and to her. But there are compensations. The new beings like to touch her, and she bumps noses with them frequently. They are more sensitive to smells than humans, and bad smells are not allowed to linger for long.

The ship they live on is small; she covers it in less than a day. Whatever they are doing, they are doing it urgently. There is much scurrying back and forth, and from time to time they carry around big bundles, or drag them on wheeled platforms. Laika is too small to help very much, but she can pull the smaller bundles, and help push things into piles in the big rooms. She gives to the work the full measure of her strength, and what more can she give? And the aliens stroke her ears and wiggle their eyes at her, and she knows she is a good girl.

They spend a lot of time looking out of the windows of their craft, and sometimes one of them will hold her up so she can see into the great, eternal darkness beyond. They are searching for new possibilities. Laika understands this well.

One day, she wakes from a nap to find the quality of the air somehow changed. Aliens are scurrying back and forth, and dozens of them are streaming in and out of a huge door in the side of the ship, waving at each other, and their excitement is a heady perfume in the air. One of them picks her up, petting her with a tentacle as it gathers objects with the other limbs, and deposits her next to a crate in the open doorway.

Laika pauses at the top of the ramp, ears tilted forward. She is a little afraid, now, as the sounds and smells of an alien world spill over her. The light has a purple tinge and pulses strangely. She misses the streets of Moscow, the cool dim alleys where she would lie in summer, the nights of foraging with her pack. She even misses the snow.

But sometimes everything you know has to be pulled down, so something better can be built in its place. The humans understood that, too. They were no strangers to sacrifice. She does not know what she will find if she leaves the ship that has so lately become her home, only that what she finds will be beyond her imagination. She must simply trust that the possibilities unfurling before her like petals will be worth the work it takes to make them true.

Ears pricked, tail held high, Laika trots down the ramp, and into a new world.


End file.
